Building a Better Mousetrap — New Lenovo ThinkServer Storage and Servers

GUEST BLOG BY ANDREW JEFFRIES …..I sometimes use an idiom that my granny, Sarah Josephine, was fond of saying, “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.” I think it’s a funny saying to describe innovation that improves on what’s currently available. Now, that’s likely not exactly the definition my granny was thinking, but I’m in the technology business and it fits aptly. News this week from Lenovo’s enterprise group reminds me of Sarah Jo and her wise words.

Lenovo announced four new enterprise ThinkServer products. Two enhanced two-processor rack servers, an all-new two processor tower server and an all-new direct-attached storage (DAS) enclosure. I’m going to talk first about the DAS enclosure because it’s my product and I know my granny would want it that way. Called the ThinkServer SA120, it’s brand-new and features both 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch drive bays in a single 2U enclosure. That’s a clever way to design a DAS enclosure and it’s currently unmatched by any other of the top server vendors. When Lenovo designed the ThinkServer SA120, it was about building a better mousetrap — addressing customers’ performance and storage needs in an intelligently designed DAS enclosure at a great price. All hail the improved mousetrap!

Also very exciting news, Lenovo announced an all-new dual-processor tower server, the ThinkServer TD340. Customers have been asking for this and we delivered. What I love about the TD340 is that it packs the impressive performance of an entry-level rack server in a whisper-quiet tower form factor, giving customers the power to run strenuous workloads, such as web, database, entry virtualization, collaborative applications and CRM — in addition to infrastructure and point-of-sale applications. With high-reliability features including, hot-swap hard-disk and solid-state drives, integrated, full-performance RAID, and redundant power, the TD340 is a great solution for any deployment where you need a reliable tower server. I think of new busy office spaces, in-store transaction aggregation and other distributed environments.

In addition, Lenovo refreshed its value dual-processor rack servers, the ThinkServer RD340 and ThinkServer RD440. Of course they include all the latest Intel® Xeon® E5-2400 v2 performance available, but they also include substantially more storage capacity, redundant power and an impressive list of new networking, HBA, CNA and RAID choices. And, while these new ThinkServer RD340 and RD440 rack servers may not be quite as exciting as the all-new ThinkServer SA120 DAS enclosure and ThinkServer TD340 tower server, they’re still an impressive value. And, that’s something that my granny, Sarah Jo, would also highly approve.